Constructivist Meta-practices: When Students Design Activities, Lead Others, and Assess Peers

David S. Bright, Arran Caza, Elizabeth Fisher Turesky, Roger Putzel, Eric Nelson, Ray Luechtefeld

Journal of Leadership Education

ISSN: 1552-9045

Open Access. Article publication date: 15 October 2016

Issue publication date: 15 October 2016

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Abstract

New educators may feel overwhelmed by the options available for engaging students through classroom participation. However, it may be helpful to recognize that participatory pedagogical systems often have constructivist roots. Adopting a constructivist perspective, our paper considers three meta-practices that encourage student participation: designing activities, leading others, and assessing peers. We explored the consequences of these meta-practices for important student outcomes, including content knowledge, engagement, self-efficacy, sense of community, and self-awareness. We found that different meta-practices were associated with different combinations of outcomes. This discovery demonstrates the benefit of studying meta- practices so as to reveal the nuanced effects that may arise from pedagogical choices. In addition, an understanding of meta-practices can help leadership educators to be more discerning and intentional in their course designs.

Citation

Bright, D.S., Caza, A., Turesky, E.F., Putzel, R., Nelson, E. and Luechtefeld, R. (2016), "Constructivist Meta-practices: When Students Design Activities, Lead Others, and Assess Peers", Journal of Leadership Education, Vol. 15 No. 4, pp. 75-99. https://doi.org/10.12806/V15/I4/R6

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2016, The Journal of Leadership Education

License

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/


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